


my brother's keeper

by rain_sleet_snow



Category: Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018), Star Wars Original Trilogy, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Ahsoka Tano Lives, Alternate Universe - Dark, Brother-Sister Relationships, Crimson Dawn (Star Wars), Dark Luke, Endor, Female Friendship, Gen, Good Intentions: Terrible Outcomes, Ilum, Jedi Leia Organa, Slavery, The Force
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-21
Updated: 2019-01-21
Packaged: 2019-10-14 02:49:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,597
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17500154
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rain_sleet_snow/pseuds/rain_sleet_snow
Summary: Luke kills his father and Falls, and Leia becomes the last resort.





	my brother's keeper

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tielan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tielan/gifts).



**i**

 

Luke came back down to the surface of Endor strange. Leia wouldn't put it higher than that. But the air around him was always cold, and sometimes, in some lights, his eyes were not blue but gold.

 

The Emperor was dead, and so was Darth Vader, and Leia was the only one who thought to ask how they got that way.

 

"I killed them," Luke said.

 

It was the only way, of course, and it was what Leia herself would have done, which didn't explain why her blood ran cold.

 

**ii**

 

Leia wrestled with constitutional law and wrung a surrender from Mas Amedda. Luke gathered a small army and went to free the slaves. He started with Tatooine.

 

"I dunno about you, princess," Han said, looking down on Luke from a balcony in Coruscant. In his off hours Luke was on a one-man mission to scour out the Jedi Temple, or so he said, but it did no good for his temper or his control. "I got a bad feeling about this."

 

"He's not himself," Leia said.

 

"I think he's maybe too much himself," Han said.

 

The sun will burn you, if you stick around in it too long. Leia folded her hands on the banister.

 

"Go with him when he goes to Ryloth," Leia said. "Please. He needs someone to... to remind him he's human."

 

She herself wasn’t quite, Leia was increasingly coming to realise. Anakin Skywalker's fire had kindled in both his son and his daughter, whether she liked it or not.

 

"What are you going to do?" Han asked, and then said: "Don't tell me. If I don't know, I can't tell Luke."

 

**iii**

 

Leia told Luke herself, between the two of them. A deniable mission to the Mon Calamari, to resolve tensions between them and the Quarren. It was essential no-one know she was there. It was essential no-one speak of her absence. Officially she would be on retreat, working on legislation.

 

"The Mon Calamari funded the Rebellion, they built our ships, they fed us," Leia said, pacing her room. "If this goes wrong -"

 

"It won't," Luke said. "You'll make it happen."

 

He hugged her, and his skin was a normal, healthy blood temperature, and Leia's lips blistered with the cold.

 

**iv**

 

Leia ditched her retinue and planet-hopped.

 

 _The Force is strong with my family_ , Luke had said. _My father had it. I have it. My sister has it._

 

Leia bleached her hair and dyed it blue before she caught her last ship. It felt like a betrayal, and was very messy besides. But Leia had a number of betrayals in mind, and this was the least of them.

 

She wrapped a red cloak over her nondescript brown clothes and took a cattle-class flight to Gatalenta.

 

_Yes, it's you, Leia._

 

She made planetfall with the rising suns. Amilyn Holdo was waiting for her.

 

"Hi," Amilyn said, kissing both her cheeks. "Your guest arrived before you did."

 

**V**

Ahsoka Tano was strong and solidly built. In her Gatalentan clothes, barefoot and lit by the suns, there was no trace of the shadowy Fulcrum, the feather-light Padawan Tano dancing with lightsabers in Clone Wars news footage, the wounded and frightened prisoner who had stood trial under the late Republic for a crime she had not committed.

 

Leia couldn’t read Ahsoka for the life of her.

 

"I am not a Jedi," Leia said. "I don't think I have it in me. But my brother has Fallen, and there must be balance."

 

Ahsoka closed her eyes for a moment. Discreetly, Amilyn slipped away.

 

"Not because he failed," Leia said, remembering what Luke had told her after Cloud City, his mouth pinched, his eyes tormented. "He did exactly what Obi-Wan Kenobi and Master Yoda told him to. He killed our father."

 

Ahsoka lowered her head. Leia watched her.

 

"What do you want?" Ahsoka said, eventually.

 

"There must be balance," Leia repeated. "I haven't come this far to let Luke destroy everything the Alliance has built, just because he thinks he knows what's right."

 

"And what if he is right?"

 

"Then I won't stop him." Leia shook her head. "You think I was supposed to be here? My father would have made a better legislator. My mother a better administrator. The galaxy would be a better place if I could go home and study. I've been the last resort all my life." She swallowed. "I'm willing to be the last resort again."

 

"You remind me of your father," Ahsoka Tano remarked.

 

Leia flinched.

 

"I meant Bail."

 

**vi**

 

Ahsoka took two months to teach Leia what she called the basics, and cautioned her that there was a lifetime of learning before her. Leia called it boot camp, and relished how hard it was, if only because she felt she was doing something concrete to face a growing threat.

 

Amilyn handed her news like petits fours on a platter. Luke had ended slavery on Ryloth and Tatooine and was now working on some of the planets in the Savareen sector, which meant tangling with Crimson Dawn. There were no trials, no elections, no tribunals, only freedom at the point of a lightsaber. Luke cauterised corrupt social systems and did not spare a thought for what was left. He was the weapon he'd been made to be. He wasn't anything more than that.

 

Leia would have thought Luke would know better, but wasn't this what they had done on Tatooine? Destroyed Jabba and carried on? They couldn't have stayed then, they would have been caught by the Empire and killed, but now what was Luke's excuse?

 

"He wouldn’t have done this, even a year ago," Leia said, laying down the précis Amilyn had written. "He was always kind. Much kinder than I am."

 

"Maybe it just looked that way," Ahsoka said. She was playing sabacc against herself.

 

"Maybe the difference is that you play by the rules," said Amilyn.

 

"Who made those rules?" Leia demanded. "Who were they meant to serve? How do I know Luke isn't going about this the right way?"

 

There was a long silence.

 

"You've been very kind, Amilyn," Leia said, at last. "But I think I have to leave. I need to talk to Luke."

 

"I'm coming with you," Amilyn said.

 

"I need someone to stay out of this."

 

"You can't do this alone." Amilyn sat down cross-legged on the balcony wall. "Your only hope of turning your brother aside is the element of surprise. He doesn't know me."

 

"Augh," Leia said, and pinched the bridge of her nose. "You're not wrong."

 

**vii**

 

Leia re-dyed her hair back to its natural brown the night before she left. The dye stained her fingers, and caught in the beds of her nails.

 

She wondered if it was some kind of omen, or only a reminder. She'd never been afraid to get her hands dirty.

 

Luke executed four men who had once worked in an Imperial senator's office, and who had probably been involved in turning prisons into slave labour factories. No-one could prove it, but due process hadn't mattered to Luke.

 

Leia didn’t mind humiliating her enemies. She set no store by their pride and little value on their quality of life. If Luke had just put them in jail she might not have said anything, although she wasn't sure it would have been the right thing to do. Evidence seemed to spring up from nowhere, when Luke turned his eyes on his quarry. How much of it had been subject to scrutiny?

 

"We are replacing corruption with the rule of the sword," Leia said.

 

"You could rule by the sword if you wanted," Ahsoka said, moving so smoothly in her lightsaber katas she didn't look real. "Probably a lot more effectively than Luke."

 

Leia hesitated. Was that what she was doing? Was that what she was willing to do?

 

"My parents didn't raise a tyrant," she said. "I'm in this for justice. Not for power."

 

"You want power," Amilyn pointed out. She had an astrological chart over her lap. It was probably priceless and she was getting cake crumbs on it.

 

"Yes," Leia said, "but I want justice more."

 

"And if justice doesn't deliver you power?"  Ahsoka asked.

 

Leia set her jaw. She felt something tug at her, and she cast it aside. "Then so be it."

 

Ahsoka turned off her lightsabers.

 

Leia's hair took half the night to dry.

 

**viii**

 

Wedge Antilles, once her brother's most loyal supporter, sent a frantic message through Draven. Han had gone down on his knees and pleaded for the life of that senator. He might well have been guilty, Han had said, but there was no proof that he was -

 

 _Luke, don't do this_ -

 

The senator was alive. Wedge was afraid. Han, he said, refused to leave Luke.

 

"How fast can we get back to Coruscant?" Leia asked Amilyn.

 

"Let me borrow one of my mother's ships instead," Amilyn said.

 

**ix**

 

"This isn't Coruscant," Leia said, eyeing the icy planet they were orbiting.

 

"It's Ilum." Ahsoka was meditating in the pilot's seat.

 

"I thought we'd agreed I'd stick to blasters," Leia said. Luke had learned to defend himself with a lightsaber, but Leia had no aspirations to the imagery of the old Jedi Order, and she knew a thousand ways to defend herself in close combat without a laser sword.

 

"If you’re going to match your brother's moral weight as a Jedi, you'll need to look like one," Amilyn said, flicking through her horoscope.

 

"Augh," Leia said again, and went down onto the surface of Ilum.

 

The crystal caves showed her a million reflections of herself, none of which were real. A million choices, and no right way forward.

 

Leia closed her eyes and very deliberately took her hand off her blaster.

_I am the last resort_ , she thought, and froze as she heard a familiar hissing breathing.

 

She opened her eyes and there was Darth Vader. She opened her eyes and he pulled off his black helmet to reveal Luke's smiling face.

 

 _I am the last resort_ , Leia thought again, and when she'd fought back the urge to throw up, she felt only compassion for whatever killing the Emperor had turned her brother into.

 

"I will never let that happen," she said, to her brother, who was not real. Her heart beat in time with his, wherever he was, and this wasn't him, and would never be. Leia had had no certainties since her parents died, only objectives, and this was one: save Luke from himself, by any means necessary.

 

Leia closed her eyes to her reflections and went where her feet led her. She came out with a crystal.

 

**x**

 

"I've ruined your mother's carpet," Leia said. The room smelled like burned wool.

 

"Yes," Amilyn said, "but she'll forgive you. You made a lightsaber." She fluffed her hair, the same pale purple as Leia's new blade. "And it's a beautiful colour."

 

Ahsoka turned her laughter into a snort.

 

**xi**

 

 Mon Mothma and Draven met her in her Coruscant office before she'd even put her bags down.

 

"Solo's left your brother," Draven said bluntly. "More accurately, Chewbacca's taken him and run."

 

Leia sat down on the chair behind her desk in lieu of falling over.

 

"Solo tried the begging for a life trick again," Draven said. "I don’t know what possessed him - it was the head of Crimson Dawn he asked for mercy for, and Qi'ra No-Name was as guilty as sin, trial or no trial. Skywalker lost his temper."

 

Leia's heart hammered in her ears.

 

"He isn’t dead," Mon Mothma said. "Luke claims it was an accident."

 

"It probably was," Ahsoka said coolly, stepping out from behind a door. "The Dark Side saps control."

 

Both Mon Mothma and Draven stared at Ahsoka, and they called her by two different names.

 

"As you can see," Leia said, laying her lightsaber down on her desk, hating the theatre of it, "I went to seek professional assistance." She swallowed. "Where is my brother now?"

 

**xii**

 

Leia stopped letting Amilyn write her briefings, and on the way to Christophsis she read everything she could find, especially about the planets that Luke had already liberated and left to fend for themselves. Some were doing better than others. Tatooine had already had a well-organised resistance movement, and so had Ryloth. Kashyyk had been stripped by the Imperial government and was relying heavily on Republic assistance. Others were not so lucky. The cartels Luke hadn't yet got to were moving in. Crimson Dawn was splintering, and each splinter seemed to create a thousand new wounds.

 

Some called him a saviour. Others said that a sword cuts both ways. A lightsaber, Leia thought, doesn’t have a single edge that isn't sharp.

 

Information never stopped moving. There was always someone awake in the galaxy. Leia drank up everything she could learn.

 

"For the love of the Force, go to sleep," Ahsoka said, lifting her out of her seat with embarrassing ease. "You are not allowed to take after Obi-Wan."

 

Once, Leia would have pointed out that she couldn't afford to, because Obi-Wan Kenobi had failed. Now she kept her tongue between her teeth. Who was she to say she would have done any better?

 

**xiii**

 

She dreamed of her biological mother, dressed in beige with blood on her hands.

 

"My brave daughter," Padmé Amidala said, and her hands turned clean and white, her tunic to a flowing blue gown. "Be on your guard."

 

Alderaan exploded before her eyes, and it was someone else's hands on her shoulders, not Darth Vader's. She wasn't sure if they were Luke's or her own.

 

Leia woke up hours too early and read one of Amilyn's books about astrology instead of any more news.

 

**xiv**

 

Leia landed on Christophsis with the falling of the night, and made her way straight to Luke, who was alone and feverish. Wedge had said he ran too hot and too thin, that his eyes were always bloodshot and he could never get warm. Ahsoka said that the Dark side was more than just metaphysically destructive. Amilyn said that, if the reports she had read were true, Luke had been repeatedly electrocuted while duelling the Emperor, and that never did anyone any good.

 

"You're ill," Leia said, taking stock of her brother. His irises were now full gold and glassy, and the whole room felt freezing cold.

 

"You look strong," he said, with open appreciation, and his face lit up when he saw her lightsaber. "Leia!"

 

"I didn't think you wanted to do this alone."

 

Luke shook his head. There was no-one else in this luxurious flat, at the top of a glassy tower with a view over many more glassy towers, and almost no furniture. It was like they'd put him in an exclusion zone - gregarious Luke, who never really liked to be alone. Leia had asked Ahsoka to find Artoo and find out what had been happening, and Amilyn to clear the lower floors of the building, just in case.

 

"It's hard, Leia," he said, with his engaging frankness. "I thought - this would be a good thing to do, a Jedi thing. It's what our father intended to do, before the Darkness fell. Free all the slaves. But I'm so tired. And nothing seems to work how I meant it to, no matter how hard I try."

 

Leia's heart broke, but her pulse continued to beat in time with Luke's. She could hear it.

 

"Have you come here to kill me?" Luke said.

 

There was a long silence.

 

"Only as a last resort," Leia replied.

 


End file.
